Ballistics vests have saved the lives of many law enforcement officers in recent years. As a result, many law enforcement agencies have now made it mandatory that their officers wear a ballistics vest while on duty.
Ballistics vests have been available in recent years as a protective panel having overlying layers of a fabric made from woven fibers known as Kevlar. Use of Kevlar fabric in ballistics vests has been successful because of the high energy absorption properties of the material. The material also is reasonably light in weight and flexible, which improves the comfort of the ballistics vest when compared with previous vests which were made of metal and were therefore heavier and more rigid. The comfort of a ballistics vest is an extremely important consideration, especially to law enforcement officers, because of the heat buildup that occurs from wearing a heavy and inflexible vest for the long hours an officer is on duty. However, the presently available ballistics vests made from Kevlar fabric have significant disadvantages.
The ballistics vest currently available offer different levels of protection depending primarily upon the overall thickness of the protective panel. Ballistics vests are subjected to ballistics testing to measure their ability to protect against projectiles fired from different types of weapons. For instance, ballistics test specifications for ballistics vests identify the weapon and caliber size, barrel length and muzzle velocity that a given vest is able to protect against. One ballistics vest is able to stop penetration from a 0.357 Magnum fired at 1400 ft/sec. More layers of Kevlar fabric may be added to a vest of offer protection against more dangerous weapons. The added protective layers, of course, add to the weight of the vest and its inflexibility, which naturally makes the vest more uncomfortable to wear, not to mention adding greater restrictions to the officer's mobility.
Ballistics vests are commonly tested by fastening them to a clay dummy and firing rounds at the vest from different angles. In one test, six rounds are fired. Two of these rounds are fired at a 30.degree. angle. The vest is then soaked in water and the same six rounds are fired again. The water test was adopted because water can act as a lubricant, which can enhance penetration of a round; and so passing the water test is good assurance that the vest is safe.
During ballistics testing, the layers of Kevlar fabric in the vest can bunch up from the impact of a round striking the vest at an angle. If the material bunches up from an angular impact, the vest usually fails the test because of its inability to stop further rounds fired during the test. Common test procedures now do not allow the vest material to be smoothed out or the vest to be repositioned between rounds. Up to the present time, the ballistics vests that have passed the ballistics tests have been too inflexible and uncomfortable during use by a police officer.
One prior art ballistics vest that has successfully passed such tests comprises a panel formed by multiple overlying layers of Kevlar fabric. The layers of fabric are stitched together by a large bax sitich in the center of the panel using high tensile strength nylon thread. When the multiple layers of Kevlar fabric are rigidly affixed to one another in this way, the individual layers are not able to move freely relative to one another. This yields a reasonably stiff panel. The resulting panel is able to bend, but the central stitching resists flexing of the panel in all directions. As a result, the panel is relatively uncomfortable when worn because of its stiffness and resistance to flexing under normal use.
Another prior art ballistics vest that has successfully passed tests involving the firing of rounds from different angles is made from multiple Kevlar fabric panels which are laminated to one another. This ballistics vest is even more unyielding than the vest in which the Kevlar layers are stitched together.
Thus, there is a need for a ballistics vest that can pass ballisitcs testing without detracting from the comfort, flexibility and light weight of the vest.
A ballistics vest using "free-floating" layers of Kevlar fabric can provide a substantial improvement in flexibility and comfort when compared with a vest made from rigidly attached layers of fabric. The free-floating layers of Kevlar fabric are overlaid without attachment to one another and are contained within a flexible outer jacket to provide a ballistics panel. However, such a ballistics vest is not able to pass the ballistics test. A ballistics vest having multiple free-floating layers of Kevlar fabric fails the ballistics test because the freely movable panels tend to bunch up when the panel is hit with rounds fired at an angle. The bunching of the material leaves portions of the vest easily exposed to penetration by successive rounds in the test and results in a test failure.
The present invention provides a ballistics vest system which incorporates free-floating layers of ballistics material in a combination that is highly flexible and unusually comfortable to wear while the resulting ballistics vest system also withstands penetration from rounds first at different angles sufficient to pass ballistics test procedures.